5.  The applicant was born in 1944 and lives in Las Vegas, United States of America.
6.  Her mother owned a plot of agricultural land of 1,000 square metres which was expropriated in 1952. Subsequently the plot was included in the urban territory of the Bankya district of Sofia.
7.  The applicant is her mother’s sole heir.
8.  In 1992, following the adoption of the Agricultural Land Act, the applicant requested that her property rights to the plot be restored. In a decision of 7 September 1994 the Bankya land commission held that, since the plot had become part of the urban territory, the procedure could only continue after the presentation of a plan of the plot and a certificate, showing whether any part of the plot had been constructed upon (see paragraph 23 below).
9.  In a letter dated 19 June 2000, in response to an inquiry of the applicant as to the status of her request for restitution, the Bankya land commission stated once again that it needed a plan and a certificate.
10.  On an unspecified date after that the applicant requested the Bankya district mayor to issue these documents, to allow her to pursue the restitution procedure.
11.  During the years which followed the Bankya district authorities instructed the applicant to submit various documents, allegedly necessary for the preparation of the plan and the certificate, which she did. Nevertheless, the documents sought by the applicant were not issued.
12.  On 27 February 2007 the applicant applied for judicial review of the mayor’s tacit refusal to issue the documents at issue.
13.  Initially, the Sofia Administrative Court dismissed the application as inadmissible. Upon an appeal by the applicant, on 19 May 2008 the Supreme Administrative Court quashed that decision and ordered the lower court to examine the merits of the application. It commented as follows on the applicant’s situation:
“It can only be concluded on the basis of the case file that in the course of many years the municipal bodies were unlawfully refusing to provide [the applicant] with a plan of the plot and a certificate, and were instead flooding her with correspondence, expressing in different letters some kind of views as to what documents she needed to present and informing her that different procedures on which her request depended were under way. ...”
14.  After a fresh examination of the case, in a judgment of 9 January 2009 the Sofia Administrative Court quashed the mayor’s refusal, finding that the mayor enjoyed no discretion as to whether to issue the documents sought by the applicant, and ordered him to issue these documents within one month. It noted that the plan of the plot and the certificate were mandatory for the Agriculture and Forestry Department (the former land commission) to be able to resume the restitution procedure, and pointed out that the mayor’s unlawful refusal to issue them affected the applicant’s right to restitution.
15.  The above judgment was not appealed against and became final.
16.  On 5 March 2009 the Bankya district mayor once again instructed the applicant to submit additional documents so that a plan of the plot and a certificate could be issued. The applicant challenged these instructions as irrelevant and impossible to observe. Nevertheless, in a decision of 24 February 2010 the mayor refused to issue a certificate and a plan because the instructions had not been complied with.
17.  The applicant applied once again for judicial review. In a decision of 25 June 2010 the Sofia Administrative Court dismissed the application for judicial review as inadmissible, considering that the case concerned the enforcement of its judgment of 9 January 2009. However, upon an appeal by the applicant, on 23 September 2010 the Supreme Administrative Court quashed that decision, finding that the fresh refusal by the mayor to issue the documents sought was subject to separate judicial review.
18.  In a new judgment of 27 June 2011 the Sofia Administrative Court dismissed the application for judicial review.
19.  Upon an appeal by the applicant, in a final judgment of 8 May 2012 the Supreme Administrative Court set the above judgment aside, pronounced the mayor’s refusal null and void, remitted the case to him, and ordered him to issue the documents sought by the applicant. It pointed out that the mayor had already been obliged to issue the documents in question on the strength of the judgment of 9 January 2009. It noted further that the certificate and the plan of the plot were prerequisites for the resumption of the stayed restitution procedure.
20.  Following the above judgment, between October 2012 and January 2013 the Bankya district administration sent three letters to the Sofia municipal administration requesting information about the plot’s current status in the land register, but, according to the applicant, made no further efforts to obtain the information thus requested, and at the end of 2013 the information was obtained by the applicant’s lawyer.
21.  On 18 August 2014, upon a request by the applicant, a judge from the Supreme Administrative Court imposed a fine of 1,000 Bulgarian levs (BGN) on the Bankya district mayor for his failure to comply with the judgment of 8 May 2012 (Article 304 of the Code of Administrative Procedure, see paragraph 25 below). The judge noted that there was no indication that the documents sought by the applicant had been issued, and also that the mayor had provided no explanation for his failure to take that action. On 30 October 2014 the judge’s decision was upheld by a three‑member panel of the Supreme Administrative Court.